


Force Majeure

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Enemies to Lovers, Existential Angst, Guns, Knives, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Soul Bond, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:16:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28636878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: There are things in this world that you can't get rid of. Knowing that isn't enough to stop you from trying anyway.
Relationships: Xu Ming Hao | The8/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 59
Collections: Seventeen Rare Pair Fest: 2 Rare 2 Pair





	Force Majeure

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SVTRarePairFest2](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SVTRarePairFest2) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> "How many times do i have to kill you before you stop coming back?"
> 
> "No idea. But please, for the love of god, keep trying."
> 
> '

There’s a noise at the back door. Minghao sits upright in bed, roused from the lukewarm slumber he’d finally managed to fall into. He can feel how purple his undereye area has gotten just by the touch, rubbing at his eyelids with his knuckles until the darkness starts to take shape around him. When he can make out the outline of the doorframe, he drops his feet to the floor and grabs the shotgun leaning against the nightstand.

Once he’s out in the hall, another noise comes, a gritty clicking sound. Just like always. He exhales slowly through his teeth while he walks, careful to avoid the loose boards, to keep his footsteps light and silent. There are more sounds while he’s on the move: a soft metal creaking, the rustle of fabric. When he gets closer to the den, the muffled hush of breathing. He stands just around the corner a minute adjusting his grip, back pressed to the wall. No more sounds come from within, but he’s not stupid enough to think there’s nothing in there. After another few seconds of waiting, he whips around the corner and raises the gun.

“Straight to the point, huh?” Jeonghan’s voice floats up from the couch. With the moonlight streaming in from outside, Minghao can see his silhouette, stretched out across the cushions like a cat in a patch of sunshine. His face stays buried in darkness, though Minghao is sure he’s smiling. “You don’t have to come in already swinging.”

“You woke me up,” Minghao says, shuffling closer. All the floorboards in here creak. Not like it matters. Not like it mattered in the hallway, either. “I’m tired.”

“Well, you do need your beauty rest.” Jeonghan straightens up a little, tucks his legs in and props himself up on one elbow. His eyes come into view, shining like glass.

“Yeah,” Minghao huffs. “I do.” He steps around the coffee table, making sure not to knock off any of the knickknacks piled haphazardly on top of it. “So let me have it.”

Now he’s close enough that he can see the rest of Jeonghan’s face, and sure enough, he’s smiling, that awful grin he always wears. Minghao presses the end of the barrel into Jeonghan’s chest, and he grabs it like it’s a rescue line. “God,” he says, tilting his chin up to get a better look. His eyes flood with moonlight. “You really do look awful.”

And whose fault is that, Minghao wonders. He takes a few slow breaths, finger itchy on the trigger. No matter how long he watches, Jeonghan doesn’t move. “How many times do I have to kill you before you stop coming back?” he asks.

“No idea.” Jeonghan’s smile morphs when he says it, remakes itself into something more real. He pulls his chest just a little closer. “But please, for the love of god, keep trying.”

The shot doesn’t make a sound. It never does. In front of him, Jeonghan bursts into a cloud of white ash and settles like snow across the couch.

In the morning, Minghao cleans each cushion individually with the handheld vacuum tube. Try as he might, he can’t get every speck. He never can. The creases and edges are starting to stain now with the residue, and he wants to get a new couch, but as long as Jeonghan keeps coming back, there isn’t much point. It would be nice if he would stand somewhere considerate like out on the back patio. Nicer still if he would stop coming back altogether, but Minghao’s long known that’s out of the question.

His life would be so much more peaceful if there were no such thing as fate or destiny or any of that horseshit. Jeonghan’s life would probably be even easier still, Minghao is sure. No point in dreaming about a world they’ll never live in. For the past year, he’s done far too much of that, lost too much sleep in the process. As he brushes the sofa seat with the palm of his hand and it comes back up starchy white, he thinks it really would be nice if Jeonghan would just die already.

Jeonghan isn’t human. He’s almost one—you wouldn’t be able to tell, just looking at him—but he’s something else. Minghao forgets the word for it; these days, there aren’t very many. He told Minghao about it the first night they met, when Jeonghan smashed the glass of his bedroom window with a fist and launched into his room, blood dripping from his knuckles. That time, Minghao had been too scared to do anything. He didn’t have the gun yet.

“You don’t understand,” Jeonghan said, wrapping his bleeding hand up in his own shirt. Sweat gleamed all over him, shimmering under the incandescent bulb hanging from Minghao’s ceiling. “I’m not… I didn’t come to hurt you.”

“I’ll hurt you,” Minghao said. Tough words for someone who couldn’t move. He was trying to remember the closest item he could use as a weapon, eyes fixed on Jeonghan as he pushed back toward the corner. “I won’t give you the chance.”

“You don’t understand,” Jeonghan said again, brow knit tight. “I don’t want to be here either.” Red spots started to show through the fabric bundled around his hand. Minghao felt the urge to bandage him up, but he didn’t do it. “But I have to be.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m not like you.” Jeonghan sank to the floor and folded his knees. Before long, he removed the shirt to wrap it fully around his hand, revealing a thin undershirt beneath. He looked frail. “I need… god, it feels so stupid to say.”

“To say what?” Minghao was still attempting to chronicle the nearest defense, but his mind was blank. His eyes wouldn’t drift from Jeonghan. “What the hell—”

“I’m fated to you,” Jeonghan said. He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaled slowly. “I have to be with you.”

Minghao took in a breath to scoff but held onto it too long, ended up swallowing it like gravel. “That’s nonsense.” Then he stood, finally. Jeonghan looked even smaller, more huddled. “As if I’m just gonna believe it. Or just let you stay here.”

“Try to get rid of me, then.” Upturned, Jeonghan’s eyes were wildly different from the rest of him, burning and sharp. “You think I want to be here? Get rid of me.” He stretched his legs out across the floor, leaned back against the wall. His hair fell over his shoulders. “Kill me. You can’t. I won’t be able to die.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in a smirk, but his eyes stayed angry, almost sad. “I’ll just keep coming back. You’re stuck with me.”

In the end, Minghao found a baseball bat. His stomach clenched when he swung it, ready to vomit, but before he could, Jeonghan was gone. A puff of white. The floorboards are still stained in that spot, gray where the ash settled in too deep, where he didn’t get around to sweeping soon enough. Three nights later, Jeonghan was back. That time, he came in through the back door.

Six months after the first time, Jeonghan was coming every two or three days, always letting himself in through the back. He came in one night while Minghao was waiting, vigilant, unable to sleep. The couch still looked mostly normal, and Minghao sat close to the edge, knees bouncing with restlessness. He held a knife tight in his hand. At that point, he still wasn’t sure what the best method would be.

“You’re going to stab me?” Jeonghan said as he stepped in, chest heaving like he’d just sprinted half the length of the earth. “How gruesome.”

“It’s not like I have a choice.” Minghao’s fingers were jittery, palm hot on the handle.

“Well,” Jeonghan said, sliding across the room, “you do have a choice.” His gaze locked in on the empty spot beside Minghao, heavy with something tender, like he was dying to sit there. His feet didn’t budge.

“What about you?” Minghao said, back stiff, afraid to move his hands. “Why don’t you just not come?”

“Oh, I never thought about that.” Jeonghan’s face didn’t move, eyebrows low. “I just won’t come. And you, next time you’re hungry, don’t eat. And next time you have to piss, don’t.” He shuffled a few inches forward and leaned down until their faces were only a few feet apart, closer than they had yet to be. His hair was soft, or looked so in the dim evening, shorter than it had been when they first met. “Does that sound good? Do you think you could do it?”

For a while, Minghao just stared at him, fingers going numb with nerves. The light glinting off the blade was starting to give him a headache, make him lose track of his position in the room, of Jeonghan on the other side. “But what happens?” he asked. “If you don’t come. Since you can’t die.”

“Imagine what it would feel like to swallow fire,” Jeonghan said. “Times ten, across your whole body.” He stepped around the coffee table, edging toward that vacant part of the couch. “Getting worse by the minute.” After another moment, he sank to fill the gap at Minghao’s side, unnervingly close. His hand wandered until it met with Minghao’s, curled together around the grip of the knife. His grip was boiling hot. “I don’t want to be here either,” he said through his teeth, “but it’s a reflex. Like when you try to hold your breath too long and end up gasping for air anyway.”

“Doesn’t it hurt to die?”

“Not as much as it does to stay away.”

With a smooth turn of the wrist, Jeonghan yanked Minghao’s hand around and pulled the knife with it, headlong into his gut. A flurry of white. It coated his hands like flour and slid right off the metal of the blade, burying itself in the fibers of the couch. The sting of Jeonghan’s touch lingered forever on his knuckles.

Jeonghan never comes during the daytime. Minghao is caught so off-guard by the sound of a knock at the door that he forgets to consider the possibility he may need to grab his gun, so even as he lays his hand on the knob, it sits quiet and motionless in the corner of his bedroom. When he opens the door, Jeonghan stands there on the stoop, wearing a half-baked grin that couldn’t convince anyone of anything. He steps across the threshold without a word and makes his way to the couch.

The light on him is jarring. Minghao is used to seeing him in the last breaths of evening light, if any light at all. He’d almost forgotten what Jeonghan’s face looks like. Under the white sheen of the early afternoon, he looks like a perfect stranger. There’s a serenity to him that he’s never looked to have before, a softness of lines in direct contrast with the rough-and-tumble way he always crashes through in the dead of night. His eyes are a warmer brown than Minghao imagined they would be.

Jeonghan flings himself across the cushions, gaze steady on Minghao for a few long moments. “You’re not going to kill me?” he asks. He props one elbow on the far armrest and rests his chin in his hand. The angle makes Minghao feel like he’s miles away, peering down with binoculars. “I thought you’d do it right away.”

For a while, Minghao’s feet won’t move. “It’s the middle of the day,” he says.

Jeonghan smiles something loose, lets his eyes droop closed. “Nothing gets past you.”

“Why are you here?” His legs move now, but not the right way. He takes one step toward the couch and stops there. Jeonghan’s eyes stay closed, chest rising and falling so slowly he wonders if Jeonghan could have fallen asleep so quickly. “Don’t you have a job?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” His lips barely move when he talks. “Home in the middle of the day?” They’re a deep shade of pink. Minghao doesn’t want to stare at them. Jeonghan’s eyes crack open just enough for his eyelashes to move. “I did have one, but I can’t do it anymore. It hurts too much.” He exhales. “I almost threw up, and when I blinked again, I was here.”

Minghao crosses his arms over his chest and huffs. All around them, the room hums with the sound of the heater. “I should move,” he says.

“You think I wouldn’t follow you?” He peeks up at Minghao, then relaxes his arm and flops fully onto the couch, eyes wandering the ceiling. “Adorably naïve.”

“Maybe if I was far enough you couldn’t.”

“Even if someone tied you up with concrete and threw you into the ocean,” Jeonghan says, “I would swim down to find you.” Sunlight splotches dance across his chest, slide between the wrinkles in his shirt. “Don’t bother wasting your money.”

Minghao walks to his recliner and takes a seat in it. The back of his brain buzzes at him, reminds him where the gun is, but he ignores it. His legs tingle with a tired numbness, and suddenly, he’s struck with the feeling he wouldn’t be able to stand even if he wanted. He watches Jeonghan lie motionless across the sofa, eyelids growing heavier by the second. “I’m so tired,” he says. Maybe he pauses too long. “Of this.”

“You’re tired?” A few loose threads around the neck of Jeonghan’s shirt stir, like blades of grass swept in a slow breeze. “Think about how much time I’ve spent this past year just running after you.” Dust motes float past him at a glacial pace, rippling through the sunbeams stretched across the room. “You’ll never be as tired as I am.”

Minghao grips the arm of the chair. It makes a tiny squeaking sound, and Jeonghan jolts, eyes spring open. They don’t stay that way for long, but they hold Minghao’s brain hostage for eons.

“Please don’t,” he says. “Not yet.” The stray fibers of his shirt fall still, sink gradually back to lie flat against his chest. “It feels so…” He swallows in the middle, eyelids squeezing shut. “It feels so nice to be here.”

Briefly, Minghao thinks about standing, defying the will of his legs, walking to his room and grabbing the gun. His palms warm with the sensation, stomach lurches. A few pearls of sweat gather on his forehead, cool and boiling, and he leans his back into the chair once again. For a silent minute, he watches Jeonghan on the couch, then allows his own eyes to drift shut. With a shuddering click, the low hum of the house dulls to nothing in his ears.

It’s dark when Minghao wakes up. Not quite past sunset, but dreary with the final breaths of orange sweeping through the windows. His eyes take a moment to adjust while he blinks the sleep out of them, search the empty couch for minutes until he remembers why it shouldn’t be empty to begin with. Immediately, he springs to his feet. The floor groans under him with each step.

As he wanders down the hall, he listens for noise, but nothing reaches his ears. With each step, he wonders more whether he just imagined Jeonghan waltzing in earlier, whether he just slept too long and dreamed something strange. It’s unusual for the sun not to wake him up, but not impossible. He has been very tired. Tired enough to die. Tired enough to start seeing things, maybe. On the very precipice of accepting everything as a dream, he opens the door to his bedroom and spots Jeonghan sprawled across the bed.

“You’re awake,” he says, eyes glittering. The window in here is covered almost totally by the curtain, but there is the faintest trace of color coming through it to frame the edge of Jeonghan’s cheek. It ripples when he talks.

“Why are you in my bed?” Minghao planned on sounding angrier, but it comes out confused. His head feels fuzzy.

“I was cold.”

“You’re not even using the blanket.”

“You wanted me to use it?” Jeonghan props himself up on one elbow, and the collar of his shirt slips past his shoulder. No wonder he’s cold. There’s a mole on his neck that holds Minghao’s attention at gunpoint.

“I didn’t want…” His breaths come out tight, steam slipping through a crack in the window. “Just get up.” The gun leans against the wall, closer to Jeonghan than Minghao. He lets his eyes drift to it.

“You don’t want to do that here,” Jeonghan says. The glint in his eyes is just shy of pleading, but his voice is calm as ever. “Not on the bed.”

“Then get up.”

Wordlessly, Jeonghan eyes Minghao for a minute, sliver of light from the window heavy across his face. It washes orange over one eye, dim and only getting dimmer, paints the corner of his lips, a stripe down his neck. He pushes himself up a little more on his elbows, then slides his legs around, slow enough to compete with the earth’s rotation. The soles of his feet hit the ground with a sound that’s barely anything, and he takes a step forward on the hardwood.

“Alright,” he says. “I’m up.”

Jeonghan stares him down from a few feet away, shoulders relaxed but still as stone. His breaths are steady and silent, don’t move his body at all. All of his face is drenched in the dark, but Minghao can tell his gaze is hard, feels it beating down on him like the sun on an August afternoon. It’s too cold for that. In the corner, the barrel of his shotgun glints, winking coyly in the fading light.

“Go outside,” Minghao says. “Back patio.”

“Roger that, captain.” Jeonghan swings his arm lazily through the air to salute, then passes by Minghao heading out the door.

Their shoulders brush as he steps by, or more like the fabric of their shirtsleeves, and Minghao’s feet feel heavy. Even though he just woke up, he’s so tired. He drags himself to the wall where the gun is leaning and grabs it, ice in his hand. The weight of it right now is almost too much for him to lift, but he manages it, slinks back down to the hallway and out to meet Jeonghan on the patio.

It’s an ugly little patio, the perfect cherry on top of his shabby house. Since he moved in, he’s only come out onto it a handful of times, for good reason. The paving is ruined, cracked to bits either by whoever installed it or by the last person who lived here. Whichever is the case doesn’t make much difference. Half-dead attempts at plants spiral up through the gaps, at home among dark mossy patches that aren’t quite green enough to be charming.

Minghao thought once about trying to fix it up, or at least setting out a chair to make it feel a little more welcoming, but he gave up on the idea before even fully conceiving it. Thus, the back patio has remained exactly as it was when we got here, if only a little worse for wear after continued neglect. The only decoration is a small fire pit in the grass just shy of a yard back from the edge of the pavement, basin lined with ashes from fires Minghao had nothing to do with. Jeonghan stands next to it, arms akimbo and eyes lidded, like he’s waiting for something.

“Don’t look so impatient,” Mnghao says, hoisting his weapon. “You’re the one who told me not to earlier.”

“I’m not impatient.” Despite saying that, his hands twitch at his hips. He runs one through his hair and exhales. “Just get it over with.” A small smile springs to his lips when Minghao raises the gun. It’s gone quick, but not quick enough to keep from being spotted.

Minghao narrows his eyes. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing,” Jeonghan says. The smile creeps back up, and this time he doesn’t quash it. “Well, I just think… I don’t think you’ll be happy.” He closes his eyes and breathes in before opening them again. “After you do this.”

“Why?” Minghao adjusts his stance. It’s difficult to balance when the ground is so uneven. “Will you actually die this time?”

For an everlasting minute, Jeonghan doesn’t answer. Minghao thinks he can see him grinning, but the sun is setting fast. “You’re saying you’d be sad if I really died?” he asks. His voice is too loud. It’s unbearable.

Minghao pulls the trigger and watches him puff into a cloud on the wind. Most of the ashes drift off into the grass, but some fall into that firepit and mix with the ages-old ashes already lining the inside. They stand out spectacularly atop the gray, brilliantly white as the moon.

When Minghao steps back inside, a chill runs up from his heels to his neck, rattling him all the way. His muscles are sore, head pounding. All he’s done today is sleep, but he’s ready to do it again. Maybe he’ll even skip dinner, just to get a bit of extra shuteye before Jeonghan makes his way back. He wades through the hall, dragging the gun along until he nudges the bedroom door open with his foot.

A familiar scene. Minghao flips the light switch to make sure he’s not hallucinating. There should be nothing but rumpled sheets and an empty slot against the wall, but there is more than that. Too much. Jeonghan is curled on top of those sheets, one leg outstretched, gaze turned Minghao’s way like he’s searching for something. Minghao moves his jaw around trying to conjure up sound, but nothing comes to him. Jeonghan’s arm obscures his mouth, but Minghao would bet this house he’s smiling.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Jeonghan says, muffled by his elbow. Minghao blinks at him.

“Why are you here?”

Jeonghan pats the bed. “It’s the last place I slept.” He sits up, revealing his face. Just as Minghao thought. What an obnoxious grin. “I have to go somewhere when you kill me.”

As much as Minghao wants to say something, his brain is screaming too loudly inside his skull to let him. He lets the gun fall to his feet and perches himself on the edge of the bed, back toward Jeonghan. His face sinks into his hands, fingertips massage his eyelids until they’re singing with black spots. He jumps when a hand lands on one of his shoulder blades, molten hot and electric. It’s only there for a second or two, but it leaves Minghao’s back smoldering. His chest aches for him to turn around and reach after it, but he stays resolute, cheeks pressed into his palms.

“I told you,” Jeonghan says, voice coming from far too close behind him. “I told you you wouldn’t be happy.” There’s a lilt to his words like they’re supposed to be funny. For a long time now, Minghao hasn’t had enough energy to laugh.

When Minghao first bought his gun, he stocked up on ammo. It was enough to last a while, he thought. Ideally, he was hoping he wouldn’t even have to use all of it. Somehow, naïvely, he thought he’d be rid of Jeonghan long before he reached the end of his supply. Maybe it’s partially his fault for never trying anything new, or never thinking about having to restock. He’s halfway through the final box, and he doesn’t feel like buying more.

“Looks like you’re running low,” Jeonghan’s voice says, chillingly close to his ear. His breath is warm, sinks into the fibers of Minghao’s shirt and sticks there. “You’ll have to get more soon.”

“Why are you in my room?” Minghao breathes out without turning around.

“It’s drafty in the living room,” Jeonghan says. “I get cold easy.” The bed was too much. He can sleep on the couch, they agreed, though Minghao himself couldn’t explain why he decided to allow that in the first place.

“That’s not my problem,” Minghao grunts.

“This is your problem, though.” Jeonghan’s arm snakes through the space between Minghao’s arm and his waist, touching neither but too close to both. His fingertips graze Minghao’s as the pluck the box. They’re blazing hot. “Will you go buy more today? Or wait until you run out?”

Minghao chews his words a little, shakes something around in his head. “Will you go with me if I buy them?”

“Of course.”

“Then I’m not going to get them.”

“What’s that?” Jeonghan tosses the box back down to the table top. There are footsteps, the sound of a spring, the rustle of fabric. “So you’re going to give up on killing me?”

He’s completely outstretched when Minghao turns around, reaching toward the corners of the mattress like a tarp pulled too taut. His eyes follow Minghao even though his head lies flat against the bed, peering down past the round of his cheeks. Minghao walks a few steps closer and keeps an eye on him, on his chest, rising and falling so minimally that it looks still. There’s more than enough light in the morning, falling in a crisp wave across him. Something about it is disorienting, like Minghao’s seeing him in too much detail.

“You really want to die that bad?”

“You would, too, if you were me.” His chest puffs up nice and full before he lets it all out in a sigh. “You just don’t get it. Whether I’m here or not, nothing changes for you.” Jeonghan raises his head slightly, narrows his eyes, then flops back down. “I’m so jealous of you. You get to live like a person.”

Minghao lets the words sink into his ears without trying to think of something to say. Maybe Jeonghan is right that he doesn’t get it. It might be a waste of time to try and understand. He sinks to the edge of the bed and stares at the wall. A sliver of wallpaper peels away, all the way from the ceiling to the top of his dresser. The wall beneath it is a dingy gray, begging to be covered up.

“Why won’t you buy more?” Jeonghan asks. From behind, he sounds far away, calling from the other side of the house.

“It feels wrong,” Minghao says. “Buying something to kill you with you watching me.”

Jeonghan snorts. “So you’ll kill me just fine, but you won’t let me see you gear up for it?” A quiet noise. Fabric. Motion. Minghao braces for the searing impact of a hand on his back again, but it doesn’t come. “Some sense of manners.”

“I’m not really killing you,” Minghao says, “since you don’t die.”

“You never know. I could die next time.”

“You really think that could happen?”

“Not a chance.”

“So why bother?” Minghao asks. He twists his torso around to look back at Jeonghan and finds him turned onto his side, staring at the opposite wall. His knees tuck in toward his chest, and he looks small, inanimate. The shell of his ear peeks out past his hair, light and pink and surely cold.

“At least this way, I feel like I’m still trying. Even if it doesn’t work.” Not a single hair moves in the air while he speaks. The outline of his back is stiff against the folds of the duvet. “If I give up, it’s just like I’m giving up on being somebody.” His shoulders stiffen, then relax. Heartbeats pass by before he talks again. “I had dreams, you know. Things I wanted to do.” His exhale is loud. “Places I wanted to go.”

Minghao watches his motionless silhouette for another moment before the feeling overtakes him that he’s seeing something he shouldn’t. Slowly, he turns himself back around to face the wall, clamps his hands on his knees. A draft from the window rolls in and stirs that loose strip of wallpaper. Minghao wants to rip it off, but he keeps sitting, eyes locked on it, watching, like it might somehow tear itself free.

Woodworking is not a profession that often necessitates leaving the house. The deliveryman brings the wood here, and the customers come to pick up their orders. Most days, Minghao doesn’t see much but the inside of the workshop. He prefers it this way. There’s nothing but the sound of his tools cranking, bouncing off the stone walls and drowning him in jumbled noise.

The sound of the door opening isn’t loud, but against the monotonous clamor, it stands out like a gunshot. Minghao flips the switch and listens to the sound of his machine coming to a halt, then turns to look over his shoulder. Just as expected, Jeonghan stands in the doorway, toe poking past the threshold and down the first of the three short steps to the concrete floor. Light frames him from behind like golden feathers. He looks like he’s watching from another world.

“Don’t stop on my account,” he says, descending the other two steps and coloring with shadow. For a second, Minghao thinks he’s coming closer, but he stays that exact same distance away.

“I told you not to come in here.”

“I just want to watch.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Now he is approaching, fast and quiet across the floor. “There’s nothing else to do.” He stops just before Minghao tells him to, almost intruding on his personal space but not quite. His hands come to rest on a rolling cart full of tips for Minghao’s chisel.

“You’ll distract me,” Minghao says. “I need to focus.”

“I won’t distract you,” Jeonghan assures him. “I’ll help. It won’t hurt to have some company.”

Minghao bites his lip. Help, indeed. If Jeonghan even tries, he’s bound to ruin the organization of something or other. The workshop is a place for one person. Without saying anything, he turns his chisel back on and lets its tinny whir fill the room, puts his eyes back on the table he’s working on. The fluting around the edges is absurdly detailed. Jeonghan interrupted him right in the middle.

He whiles the day away in silence, stops once he feels hunger start creeping up from his stomach. When he turns around and finds Jeonghan still watching him, seated far off on one of the steps in, his head goes light. “You’re still here,” he says. His voice is impressively even despite the shock.

Jeonghan’s eyes read caramel even from this distance, sticky and hard to escape. “Nothing gets past you.”

“I thought you would’ve gone inside.”

“Why? I said I was going to watch.” Jeonghan rises to his feet and stretches his arms upward, lets his knuckles brush the top of the doorframe. “You didn’t let me help, though.”

“I don’t need help.” Stiff, Minghao stands from his stool and rolls his shoulders. “I’ve got it handled. You’d just be in the way.”

Jeonghan leans against the doorjamb and watches Minghao approach, stare hard and molten. Minghao feels the phantom sense of a hand burning into his back and shakes it off, breathes in. When he reaches the door, Jeonghan doesn’t move. They stand at a stalemate for a few moments, Jeonghan’s gaze glinting down from the top of the steps. It feels bizarre to be the one being looked at from above.

“What are you trying to do?”

“You said I would be in the way, so I’m being in the way.” His lips tilt in an unnerving grin. “Aren’t you happy? You were right.”

Minghao sighs. “Just move.”

“I’ll move if you promise to kill me.”

The tips of Minghao’s ears go hot and cold at the same time. He’d been wondering if Jeonghan would mention it. Since he noticed he was running out of bullets, he’s only shot Jeonghan twice. Something about using all of them and going out to buy more makes him feel sort of sick, and any other methods of killing make him feel sicker. It was different when Jeonghan disappeared for a few days afterward, but now that he’s always here, something about it sits wrong. There’s no feeling on the end of his nose.

“Why won’t you do it anymore?” Jeonghan asks.

“I don’t have any reason to,” Minghao flubs. It’s not a lie. “I was doing it to get you to leave, and now you don’t. It’s a waste of time.”

“So you’re just leaving me out to dry?” He sounds more hurt than his face betrays, and his body doesn’t budge an inch.

“It’s not going to work,” Minghao says, “no matter how many times we try it.” He takes a stride up to the next step, and their faces are hauntingly close. Less than breath, he can feel the tension Jeonghan exerts on the air, dusting hot over his cheeks. His skin starts to itch. “We have to come up with something different.”

“There is nothing different. This is the only—”

Minghao braces himself, then makes one last quick step to shoulder past and into the house. It almost works. Just before he’s home free, Jeonghan’s hands latch onto him, bony but ferocious, gripping like the last finger of a man dangling from a ledge. They are unbearably hot, melting into his forearms, and Jeonghan’s face is right in front of his. Minghao’s knees lose their strength.

“Let go of me,” he says, desperately shuffling his feet to find solid ground. The longer Jeonghan holds him, the further the burning sensation spreads, working through his fingers and back up toward his shoulders, flaring out to his neck, chest. His whole body is hot and he can’t breathe and he can’t stand and Jeonghan is still there, palms pressed flush to his skin, eyes nailing him down.

“No,” Jeonghan says, grip tightening. “Not until you help me.”

In a minute, Minghao can’t feel anything but heat. His head fogs up, and he tries, distantly, to wrench Jeonghan’s hands off of him, but they won’t go. Even as he tries to break free, he realizes it doesn’t hurt. The first time Jeonghan touched him, he thought it was pain, but now he’s finding that it isn’t. Somehow, his body closes in toward it, though his rational mind still urges him to escape. The muscles in his arms and legs move on their own, pulling themselves in further, and at the same time, he fights to reel them back. All he can see is Jeonghan.

After struggling in the doorway for a moment, they twist their way out and into the den. Minghao has full control of one foot, and he tries his best to use that to his advantage, drag the rest of him free. But the only thing he looks at is Jeonghan, eyes unwaveringly interlocked, and he doesn’t know where it’s taking him.

His foot catches the edge of the rug wrong and slides out from under him. The change in balance is just enough to get Jeonghan to let go. Minghao’s body sweats with the sudden chill, muscles contracting in protest. He wants to reach down to stop himself from falling, but he can’t. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots something coming up at him quick, or rather, he’s the one coming down. It’s the coffee table. There are metal embellishments on the corners, and one of them is about to get buried in his ear.

Before he can think about it, something sears his arm, and then he is standing on the hardwood, a pile of white ash dancing around his feet. Nothing reaches his ears.

Brain cloudy, he turns himself around in slow motion and staggers down the hallway toward the bedroom. The door doesn’t make any sound when it swings open. Not that Minghao is listening. Jeonghan is there in the bed. He’s slept there without Minghao knowing, maybe sometime in the middle of the day. That’s not the detail Minghao’s attention catches on. He stares, and Jeonghan stares back at him. Suddenly, the world is so cold.

“You saved me,” he says. One shaking step inward. His eyes are still flooded with the sight of the table, the corner, the ash all over.

Jeonghan lowers his gaze from Minghao to his own hands. He turns them over like he doesn’t recognize them, laces his fingers together and squeezes like he’s testing something. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess I did.”

“Why?”

Instead of answering, Jeonghan keeps staring with apprehensive eyes at his hands, watching, like they’re on the verge of turning into something else.

Because he had to. He saved Minghao because he had to. Jeonghan tells him later, after they’ve eaten and Minghao’s head feels like it’s back on his shoulders. Pale ashes remain in the living room floor, sunken into the gaps of the wood where the broom can’t reach.

“It’s why I’m fated to you,” Jeonghan says, pulling at a loose thread on the arm of the couch. Minghao watches him from the opposite side. Every time he gets close to ripping it out, he lets it go and smooths it back down, only to search for it again. “I have to protect you.”

“Why me?” Minghao asks. “It’s not like I need protecting.”

“Unfortunately, it wasn’t my choice.”

They sit there a while longer without speaking, Minghao looking across at Jeonghan and Jeonghan looking down. The air is too thin, walls too far. Minghao feels like an ant isolated under a magnifying glass, running from the inevitable. Jeonghan looks like the same ant, standing still instead, waiting for the world to catch on fire. His chest moves steadily with each breath until it doesn’t. A hitch.

“There is a way,” he begins, “that I can die.”

“There is?” Minghao wants to be angry. Parts of him are. “And you’ve just been hiding it?”

Jeonghan glances at him, finally, distant. He wears a thin smile that doesn’t look at home. “Because it’s not a good one,” he says. “And you’re not gonna like it.”

“Just tell me what it is.”

“You have to die.” Their eyes are locked together now, and Jeonghan’s are almost frantic, like he’s watching a boulder roll down at him from a hilltop. “If you die, my job is done.”

Minghao opens his mouth a couple times, feeling around for something. His tongue is dry. “I see.” Half of him expects Jeonghan to talk again, wishes he would. That half is out of luck. “Why,” he says, throat cracking around it, “didn’t you just kill me?”

Now Jeonghan’s eyes go wide. Something about it makes his face more charming, brings back color to his cheeks. Minghao’s chest hurts. “Do you really think I would? Jesus.”

“It’s not that I think you would,” Minghao says. “It just makes the most sense.”

“As if I could just… kill somebody.” He gulps. “How could I live with that?”

“But then you could die.”

For an everlasting minute, Jeonghan stares at him. No trace of a smile. “But I don’t want to die.”

Minghao’s stomach does a backflip when Jeonghan leans toward him. His lips part like he’s going to say more, but he doesn’t. They just stay there parted and they are so pink and Minghao cannot stop looking at them, cannot stop feeling so cold. There is a mole on Jeonghan’s neck and another on his cheek. Minghao is close enough to touch them. He wants to reach out and touch them, wants to ask Jeonghan what he’s trying to say even though he knows.

“I see.”

The silence lasts a lifetime. Jeonghan clears his throat.

“So now that you know, what are you going to do?” he says. He doesn’t lean closer but seems to, looming ever nearer across the cushions that suddenly feel so small and cramped. “Will you die for me?”

Minghao takes a moment to answer. It’s an easy one, and he’s not even thinking about it, but at the same time, he’s thinking about something. “No,” he says at last.

Jeonghan breathes out like he’d been holding it, lets his head loll to the side. His hair falls with it, soft around his face. “Didn’t think so,” he says. There’s that grin again, but it’s not so grating anymore. Now it just looks tired. He sighs. “So we’re stuck with each other.”

“We don’t have to be,” Minghao says, “stuck.”

“Don’t we?”

“We can just be with each other.”

“What are you talking about?”

Minghao leans forward and wraps his hand around Jeonghan’s wrist. It burns in a different way than before, melts so slowly backward into his arm. He wonders if Jeonghan feels it the same way he does, or if to him it feels like any other hand, any other touch in the world. His fingers are shaking by the time he notices. Jeonghan notices too. He places his hand over Minghao’s, palm resting across the knuckles, and it blends in with the rest of the heat.

“What are you doing?” Jeonghan asks, a whisper.

“It’s warm,” Minghao says. He closes his eyes and exhales. “And I’m tired of being cold.”

They look at each other a while, hands linked, warming gradually. He’s sure by now that Jeonghan feels this heat, has to feel it. A tiny smile cracks Jeonghan’s face, eyes twinkle barely in the fading light. He breathes out a tiny laugh.

“So am I.”

The thing about woodworking is that it can more or less be done from anywhere. It doesn’t have to be at this run-down little house with its groaning wood floors and dilapidated back patio, and it doesn’t have to bee in this cramped studio lined with shelves full of odds and ends Minghao hasn’t touched in years. As long as Minghao has his tools, he can make whatever he needs to, and as long as he can make it, he can sell it. They can be anywhere.

“This could be a nice workshop,” Jeonghan says, turning in circles in the next empty room they walk into. Sunlight streams in through the large window on the far wall and bounces around off everything, makes him look golden. His smile is so real it borders on aggressive.

“I don’t like to have windows in my shop,” Minghao says, hands in his pockets. It’s spacious enough, though. Against his will, he pictures new shelves, the way they would look against the walls. Unfortunately, it’s not bad.

“Boo.” Jeonghan turns around and stretches his hand toward the glass, fingers dancing around in the sunbeams. “You could use a window. It’d really brighten you up.”

“I’m bright enough already, thanks.”

“Sure,” Jeonghan says. “And I’m a centaur.” He circles around and walks back to Minghao with a glint of mischief in his eyes. “You just don’t want to see me outside and get distracted.”

“You say that as if you don’t distract me no matter where you are.”

“So that is the reason.”

Minghao sighs. As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, there is something charming about the place, something that makes it already feel like a home. All the places they’ve checked out so far have just been houses, but this one really feels like it could be lived in. Maybe it’s the way the floorboards sing in the halls when they take steps, or the hairline crack across one of the windows in the kitchen. It might be the wallpaper in the bedroom, the only room that has it, fit snugly together in even sheets. It’s ugly, but maybe they can change it.

“I want to live here,” Jeonghan says.

“I was picking up on that.”

“What about you?”

These days, Jeonghan always stands close. It’s different. If Minghao isn’t careful, he starts to think he dreamed everything up: that look in Jeonghan’s eyes the night they met, the feel of a gun in his hands, the powdery inklings of white ash sticking all over the old house. Maybe things would have been better if he’d dreamt it, but right now isn’t the time for that thought. Jeonghan is standing close, close enough for the warmth from his cheeks to bleed into the air, eyes hard on Minghao’s in the softest way they can be.

“If you want to be here,” he says, “then I’ll come with you.”

Jeonghan chuckles, lips upturned gently. “I thought you would say that.”

He places his hands on Minghao’s cheeks and pulls until their lips meet, stars mingling in the middle of space. By now, Minghao is mostly used to the burning sensation, but he’s still trying to get used to this. Sometimes, Jeonghan is still so difficult to understand. When their faces are close like this, though, when their eyes meet for long enough, he feels against his better judgement like he understands everything.

They stay that way a few minutes longer, perfectly still in the middle of an empty room, before Jeonghan pulls back. Every time, Minghao misses that feeling as soon as it’s gone. “Let’s go,” Jeonghan says, voice low. “There’s more I want to do today.”

“Like what?”

“Anything,” Jeonghan says. He turns to leave the room, and his silhouette glimmers, vibrant against the walls. He reaches up toward the ceiling, hands tangling together in the light, and lets out a breath. “I think we can do anything.”

Minghao sighs. “But I’m asking what you want to do,” he says. “Right now. Concretely.”

A laugh buds at his lips and flowers along the air, crawls around Minghao’s shoulders and covers him completely. “I’ll think of something,” he says.

Just by the sound, Minghao can tell he’s smiling. He’s sure Jeonghan already has something in mind, and he’s just waiting to say it until it’s too late for Minghao to tell him no. These days, Minghao isn’t much inclined to say no to many things, but he’ll die before he says as much. Breath whistling through his nose, he walks after Jeonghan, steps quicker than usual. If he’s lucky, he’ll catch a glimpse of that smile before it melts away. At the moment, that’s the one thing he wants most to do.

**Author's Note:**

> hiiiiiiiiiiiii i really liked this prompt and thought it was interesting and decided to do a sort of soulmate-y spin on it for this fest!! honestly it would have to be about 3x as long to actually be good but this is just what we have here. to whoever provided this prompt, i hope you like it at least a little! thanks for reading!!


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